Some educators may view correctional settings as substandard sites for medi
cal student clerkships in psychiatry. The authors report on 2 years of medi
cal student evaluations of teaching and student performance outcomes from a
psychiatric clerkship conducted in outpatient mental health clinics in a c
ounty jail system. When compared with other clerkship sites, the jail sites
were rated equivalently for teaching and patient variety, and students at
the jail sites performed comparably on exams and preceptor ratings.